Monsieur Hawarden

Summary

Self-taught film-maker Harry Kümel started his career as scriptwriter for Rik Kuypers and Herman Wuyts. He soon set out shooting films himself, short experimental films (Anna la bonne, after Jean Cocteau), fiction shorts (Tous les parfums de l'Arabie) and documentaries (Uit glas en staal).

A striking feature debut by the 28-year-old Kümel, this is an adaptation of the Flemish short story by Filip de Pillecyn and Henri Pierre Faffin's novel, both of which were inspired by an actual event that occurred in Malmédy in 1870. Jan Blokker's screenplay is a romantic adaptation of this mystery of a young Parisian noblewoman who goes on the run after committing a crime of passion and lives a life of exile in a remote village, disguised as a man.

Masterfully atmospheric, this film, with its carefully studied detail and delicate symbolism, focuses on the relationship between the mysterious and intriguing Hawarden and her maid Victorine. Kümel's elegant and highly suggestive psychological character study, which is full of ambiguous sexual implications, contains many reminders of Resnais, Dreyer, Bergman or Bresson.

This Freudian drama also excels through its magnificent landscape photography and its use of chiaroscuro. Kümel would have preferred to shoot the film in colour, but his budget (7 million Belgian francs, including a grant of 2.480.000 francs) did not stretch far enough. This Belgo-Dutch co-production dedicated to Josef von Sternberg was filmed in the area around Tongres, Spa and Malmédy. Due to difficulties with the distribution, the film was only released one year after completion.

Information

original title
Monsieur Hawarden
production year
1969
censorship date
01-10-1968
first screening
20-03-1969
country
Belgium, Netherlands
geographical names
category
Fiction
applicant inspection
director
original distributor
production company
production company

Images

Cast

Actor

Crew

Technical notations

runtime
109
original length
2947
censorship length
2947
sound
Sound
colour
Black and white
format
35mm
acts
10

Resources

Centrale Commissie voor de Filmkeuring (Nationaal Archief; K1364)
Johan J. Vincent, Naslagwerk over de Vlaamse film: ('Het Leentje'), Brussel (1986), pp. 257
Marianne Thys (ed.), Belgian Cinema - Le Cinéma Belge - De Belgische film, Gent-Amsterdam (1999), p. 450

more information

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